Mapping a City (Article)

Snapshot of Williamsburg, Va at a Freedom Park Bike Trail

Mapping

"As maps depict a representative space, its prevailing conditions and knowledge concerning space, and also incorporate an authorial standpoint as well as political, religious, cultural and facultative elements, the relationship of societal and spatial structures really is compelling."

-Nina Möntmann (in the article "Mapping. A Response to a Discourse.")

This is pointing out the potentials that lay in wait for mapping and art. I think that the author is trying to point out that the map is much, much more than just a map. It's a system of sustainability that can incorporate a vast amount of knowledge. Mapping is not just for roads anymore, it's for political, spatial, religious, and cultural uses. It is pushing for us to continue to blur the lines between the everyday road map and art. We need to further pursue the art of mapping in all genres of art.


"They [maps] generate the concepts of a social space open at its edges to subjective and subversive appropriations that reflect social realities and can create new ones. The strategy of mapping, in art as in other disciplines, thus has political potential that needs exploiting."

-Nina Möntmann (in the article "Mapping. A Response to a Discourse.")

This is a summation of the article pretty much in my opinion. Art and mapping have long been at opposing sides, reaching for different potentials, but as i feel mapping and art can be conjoined. The two need to be inter connected. Due to the prevent use of media and computer mapping these days and everyone's need to know exactly where they are at all times of the day, mapping is necessary to its and art's potential. The author is calling for us as artists to exploit the powerful nature of visual data, that being the map. It is political, ecological, geographic, and so many other things. Mapping is a cultural thing, it;s how the world became the world. Through mapping we have the ability to create visual meaning through data we collect and document the journeys that we lead.




Möntmann, Nina, and Yilmaz Dziewior. Mapping a City. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004. Print.